For those of you who don't know, I work for an insurance company. I'm an actuary-in-training, meaning that I do grunt work and study for actuarial exams. When (if?) I pass five more exams, I can actually be called an Actuary. For the first 3.5 years of my time at my current employer, I helped set base rates for private passenger automobile insurance. For the past 9+ months, I have been helping to figure out how much money we need to keep on hand to pay out for claims (on the macro level, that is -- I don't figure out how much we have to pay for any one claim). Now, having established my qualifications, I will answer the original question:

Hybrid owners should get reduced insurance rates if, as a group, they show that they deserve it.

At this point, only the largest insurance companies are likely to have enough hybrid data to make any decisions about discounts (or even surcharges). I'm actually surprised that Traveller's has enough data. I expect State Farm and Allstate probably do have enough, and Progressive and GEICO may as well.

Finally, if a company wants to offer a discount or impose a surcharge for any reason (hybrid or anything else), it is almost the individual state which decides whether it can be done or not. Some states are VERY hands-off when it comes to automobile insurance regulation (the most hands-off I know of is Wyoming, where a company can start using rates/rules and is obligated only to inform the state that it is going to do it). Some states are VERY hands-on when it comes to automobile insurances regulation (a company would have to provide a LOT of backup for any new discount or surcharge and might have to regularly update the data to keep the discount/surcharge in place).

I don't recall which insurance company I had at the time, but during one of my renewals, I asked why they collected information on previous accidents that were cited "not at fault." The agent told me that several "not at fault" accidents shows there's a LOT more risk involved with that driver than someone that's never been in an accident. I think they used the phrase "contributary negligence." Meaning, there was a chance that if a person has that many "not at faults" then there may be something that driver is doing to put them in a situation which causes others to crash into them. And after having so many "not at fault" accidents in a three year period, they can deny a renewal. It's been over 10 years since I got this information, so things might have changed since then. I believe it was either Geico or Allstate in Virginia that told me that.

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re: contributory negligence -- state law

http://dictionary.law.com/definition...lected=1314&am

As for non-renewals, they're pretty uncommon in my experience. Some states make it very hard to non-renew. In at least one state that I know of, CONVICTION of insurance fraud isn't even enough to non-renew someone. The company would be more likely to increase the persons premium through re-underwriting, thereby sending the person shopping.

Speaking of insurance, I just got my price quote from Travellers. It's over $150 more per year than my current provider Progressive even with the 10% discount. I think I won't be switching anytime soon

What about the part about insurance companies not liking drivers with "not at fault" accidents?

What brought this up was at the time, I had two. The first one was a police car cut me off on my motorcycle. He was a few car lengths ahead of me in the center lane of a three lane one-way street. I was in the left lane. He decided to make a left turn from that center lane, with no turn signal. I crashed into the driver's side door. Officer said he didn't even see me behind him. The second was I was sitting as the first vehicle in the side street, waiting for my cross traffic light to turn green. Two cars collided in the intersection and one of them got redirected towards me. Again, I was on my motorcycle. Car knocked me off the bike.

Both accidents weren't my fault. Hypermiling wouldn't have saved me, as I was already going 30 miles per hour. But, faster reaction time (noticing the car was slowing down without brakelights coming on) and a quicker application of the front brake would have stopped me before hitting the car. The second time, no amount of hypermiling would have saved me either, since I was stopped at a red light.

I'm not doubting hypermiling (just incase Delta Flyer thinks so) saves anyone from accidents, I just think it's probably that the driver/hypermiler is more aware of his/her surroundings.

Both of those "not at faults" are off my records now. But for the three years that followed those accidents, I didn't switch companies because I thought another company would rate me higher because of them. If Harville can shed some light on this, then if it happens again, I'll know better.

With Harville on the forums, some of the inner workings of insurance companies can finally be decoded to us!

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Some companies are more strict than others. I know of some that seem to match every "evil insurance company" stereotype you've ever heard and I know of some that don't. The same company might be more (or less) strict about homeowners claims than it is about automobile claims. Multiple small homeowners claims might get you nonrenewed faster than multiple small auto claims.

The company I work for tries to limit the number of applicants we reject. We might not always offer what the customer thinks is an attractive price, but we're also not out to "get" anyone.

I feel your pain re: the not at-fault crashes. I was rear-ended twice within six months, in two different cars, one rural area and one densely populated suburban area, in two different states (Georgia and Maryland; negating the "he drives in accident prone areas" argument). Both times I was at a complete stop and had been for at least 15 seconds before the crash -- once at a red light at the end of an off-ramp, once in a long line of traffic waiting for an exit ramp.
I learned my lesson: Now I never come to a complete stop.

My premium was not affected -- that was two insurance carriers ago. I did shop around within one year of the second crash, and that was the first time I had shopped in many years. Found a better premium. I have since left *that* insurer for another and I will probably shop again before the end of this year.

Keep in mind that shopping around does not affect your current policy. You can get a new quote every single day from a different company. The only way to know if the not at fault crashes will affect the prices you're offered is to shop. Of course, even then you won't know that it was those crashes that "hurt" (or didn't hurt) you or if it is some other characteristic.

As for me revealing the inner workings of the automobile insurance industry, we better get a state insurance department representative on this board, because I'm not going to say many nice things about those folks. In other words, you're getting only one side of the multi-faceted story from me.